Due to the short nature of the Nuremberg street circuit, the 27-driver grid was split into two groups for qualifying, with each group getting 20 minutes of on-track time.
Van der Linde was part of the second qualifying session and lapped the 2.3km circuit in 48.775s in his Schubert BMW, beating Thomas Preining’s time from Group A by 0.178s to take pole position.
Manthey EMA’s Prening had set the pace in Friday practice ahead of qualifying and was the only driver from his group to dip into 48s, but the laptimes in the second session were much quicker - with a total of six drivers breaking the 49s barrier.
Among that quartet was Team Bernhard Porsche driver Ayhancan Guven, whose time of 48.791s - which was just 0.016s slower than van der Linde’s pole time - put him third on the grid.
Second-fastest in Group A, HRT Mercedes driver Luca Stolz qualified fourth alongside Guven, with Abt driver Kelvin van der Linde the top representative for Audi in fifth.
Mirko Bortolotti was next up in sixth for SSR Performance Lamborghini, while Schubert BMW’s Rene Rast qualified seventh on his return to DTM after missing last month’s Zandvoort round due to clashing commitments in Formula E.
Winward driver Lucas Auer was seventh-fastest ahead of fellow Mercedes racer Jusuf Owega (Landgraf), while the top 10 was completed by Ricardo Feller in the Abt Audi.
Source: Autosport